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Pre-Eternity Hour Athrenda Athrenda was the band that started the musical bond between two key members of Eternity Hour: Toni and Ville. They had known each other previous to the band's incarnation, but only joined the same band after ending up in the same school. Following Athrenda, Toni and Ville have performed in Eternity Hour, their duo group Awaken Shades and occasional ensembles. Athrenda was a heavy group of three blokes, that started from Ville and Abe's idea of starting a band. When the guitarist and drummer were joined by lead guitarist Toni, and as musical skills started progressing to a degree the "band" started to finally feel like a group. The band was named Athrenda, a couple of songs started working, and when Ville decided to become a singer the band was ready to gig. The activity as Athrenda held for nearly two years. The band came to an end as the musicians' relations intensified and no one remained eager to keep the band going. JJSL JJSL (Jyry Johannes Sakke Leevi) performed once before disbanding naturally. After being in the same school as Alfred for over a year, Sakke and Jyry, who had previously tried out a few bands enthusiastically but with little success, were set to perform in the same band with him in the Kartano school's 9th grade musical. The school had invited Alfred was asked to play bass on a few songs. Sakke, Jyry and Alfred were impressed by each others' general knowledge in music, and after playing in a few more school projects Jyry and Sakke wanted to start a band. Nearing the end of the school year it's annual outdoor concert was to take place, and a group was formed that included Jyry on guitar, Sakke on drums, Alfred on keys and fellow Kartano musician Leevi Hanioja on bass. The set included a jam version of "In And Out" by Wes Montgomery, "YYZ" by Rush (during which Alfred took over on bass, with Leevi on synth) and "The Weight" by The Band, which featured two female vocalists sharing some verses. The gig took place less than a week before Jyry and Sakke both graduated from the school. Jyry applied to Järvenpää high school alongside his soon to be acquaintances Toni and Ville. Eternity Hour Starting the band On their second day at the Järvenpää high school Jyry, Toni and Ville ended up going to a local McDonald's restaurant, where they conversed about music. At one point the three started talking about their previous projects, and they decided to think over on making a band. About a week later on August 17th, 2015, Jyry, Toni, Ville and Sakke played together at Jyry's house, and Eternity Hour was created. Shortly after, Jyry and Sakke nominated Alfred to take over the organ and join the band. The group exchanged messages for a few days, and, since they had no place to practice, went to Alfred's house on the 28th of August. The equipment wasn't optimal, but the only available organ was Alfred's borrowed Lowrey Heritage organ, which was not under condition to be moved. The organ was in the middle of repairal and was hardly playable, but worked enough to give the band an idea of how the ensemble would sound. Whenever the organ stopped working, Alfred would switch over to piano. To this day the organ still hasn't been fixed. The band practiced regularly for a few months, and worked consecutively on their music. Initially, Eternity Hour wasn't meant to be progressive about how they sounded. Toni had stated that he didn't want a prog band, but the band hardly turned down any idea in the beginning. Alfred's house also had a lot more miscellaneous instruments than, say, a band room, and the instruments were inspiredly thrown into songs: Pornofunk and instrumentation The band had prepared an ominous riff for the song "Under The Red Painted Sky" sometime in September, and Ville recalled a funky bassline that Toni had shown him sometime before. Toni wasn't sure the funk would fit right after the second verse, although Alfred insisted on the amusing style shift from heavy metal to, quote, "Pornofunk", a term that became central to Eternity Hour's work. Ville suggested a saxophone solo to take place during the funk part, since Alfred had an alto sax with him. Following that, Toni laid a quick bass solo before a melodica breakdown that took the band back to the foundation riff. Eternity Hour has had many occasions of members (though mostly Alfred) switching between various instruments ever since. Gigging Soon after Eternity Hour was started, they got a call from a punk band called Cross D'Bility that needed a supporting act for their gig at the Vernissa culture house in Tikkurila, Finland. The show took place little over one and a half months after Eternity Hour started, but the songs, and to some extent the live act, were already in state. The band quickly booked more gigs before the new year, and played four in November. The live sound started evolving swiftly, and despite some borrowed amps being sub-standard and guitars being off tune, the audiences were positive about the act. After November 19th, for more than three months the band hardly had any shows; only one gig took place between December 2015 and February 2016. Only in March things started to happen on the off trails of Emergenza: since then until June the band played thirteen shows in total, five of which were competitive. ''Information on past and future gigs are on the page about ''Eternity Hour live shows. First demo During November 2015 the band wanted to record their own demo because, although they didn't want to spend money at such an early time to go in a studio, they wanted to have some kind of internet-accessible audio to present their music. Jyry had his recording software ready, and the band had a few mics (mostly videogame accessories) to record with. Most of the guitar and bass parts were recorded at Jyry's house. Rotary guitar, bass solos, vocals, keyboards, kalimba and percussion were recorded at Alfred's. The hardest part was recording drums at Sakke's house: A Shure SM58 was ran through a Marshall MS-2 and used as an overhead mic taped to the ceiling, and the bass and snare drums were recorded with Rock Band/Guitar Hero mics. Approximately an hour was used on EQ and mic placement, and another hour was used on recording. The band assigned deadlines to release each song off the demo: The 1st and 12th of December. The mixes were somewhat skewed: "40 Days" was tested on four different sound systems, but Jyry remixed it, because it sounded off when played through his stereo at home: the final vocals and keyboards sounded poor in the released version. "Under The Red Painted Sky" was mixed somewhat better, but it's drums were recorded to an off beat bass track, and vocals were still dim. The demo was uploaded on Eternity Hour's SoundCloud page. Vostok demo The band had gotten acquainted with musician and studio producer/technician Matti Kari through Alfred, who had first met him in 2015. The Nord Electro used extensively on Eternity Hour's early gigs was lended by Matti, and he helped manage some of the band's gear and record most of their gig at the Järvenpää Congregational Hall in 2016. After gaining interest in the band, Matti offered them to record a demo at his high-tech Vostok studio; a generous offer, seeing as the band had basically no resources. The first session finally took place in January of 2017. Comparing their disappointment with their first demo and the high quality of Vostok, the band decided to record the same two songs again. The foundation tracks were done in the same day as a guitar, bass and drums ensemble with Alfred "conducting" along. Overdubs were done in separate sessions until the tracks were basically finished in February. Nuotta demo After Eternity Hour's performance at "Paloheinä Soi" in 2016, the hosting youth-organization offered them a premiering session at a studio which was still under construction at the Nuotta community center. The band took the offer, and spent a weekend in the studio in February of 2017. The band decided to work on one of their funkier songs "Supersonic", but being time-efficient they also recorded another song called "Ei Pilz". The foundation tracks were, again, done in a guitar-bass-drums-conductor style. Most of the overdubs were done over the weekend, but some instruments like mandolin and finger cymbals were recorded later on by the band. One of the reasons the overdubbing took so long was that Alfred wanted to buy a better saxophone to use on the demo. However, after months of failed searching, he decided to just use his broken, cheap Startone sax to get his part done sometime in October. "Vostok/Nuotta" The aforementioned demos were completely finished by early February 2018, and were released as a single record "Vostok/Nuotta" calling it a double-demo. The release date was February 22nd and the record was distributed onto multiple platforms such as Spotify, Bandcamp and Soundcloud. The cover was designed by Alfred based on a photograph taken at a rehearsal by friend of the band Henna Valve. The double-demo got it's premiere performance at an event at the Vernissa culture centre in Tikkurila, Finland on the 24th, two days after it's release. Competitions Eternity Hour and 80 other bands applied for the Emergenza contest, which began in March 2016. The first round was held at Bar Loose in Helsinki, and Eternity Hour performed on the 9th making through to the Finnish semi-finals held at Nosturi. The band went all the way through to the Finnish finals, having participated for the first time in Emergenza. In 2016, about 30 bands including Eternity Hour applied for the SKEBA band contest created by the Lions-club of Finland. Despite having Alfred wailing lead vocals in the tryouts (Ville was sick), the band won it's place in the finals held in Turku, Finland. Six bands performed, and the judges announced Eternity Hour as the winner. Some of the bands that have previously prevailed in the SKEBA competition are cult trash-group Lost Society, and the pop-rock ensemble Softengine, which was chosen to represent Finland in theEurovision Song Contest 2014.